The sky darkens over a field north of Columbia
at the end of the opening day of rifle season. Dennis Thompson has just been
told the shot he fired at an eight-point buck nearly 300 yards away drew
blood.

“Oh man! That’s exciting! That was a hell of a long shot; if
we smoked that deer that would be freakin’ amazing!” he says.

A hit at such a distance is an impressive feat to be sure,
but even more so when you consider that Thompson did it with only one arm and
one leg — and that he’s blind.

To be fair, he had some help from a digital scope system
that relays the line of sight onto a portable DVD player and from the man
watching the screen and guiding Thompson’s aim, Boone County Special
Sportsmen’s Association co-founder Victor Acton.

“Feeling the excitement through the other hunters is the
best part of this,” Acton says.

The BCSSA was founded in 1999 by Acton and Mike DeShazo to
help men and women with various disabilities hunt in a safe and supervised environment. Each year, the organization takes a group of hunters
out on opening day of rifle season as part of its Freedom Hunt. Each hunter is paired with at least one
guide, and they spend the day in the hunting blind together, waiting for their
shot.

“If we don’t take these people hunting, they just don’t get
to go,” DeShazo says.

This is Thompson’s fourth year participating.
“The biggest thing about being out here is just the people you get to meet," he says. "It
seems like every year so far we’ve had different guys come out, and the guides
turn into your friends.”